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I >> Irvah Lester Winter >> Public Speaking




And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this
infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to catch hold and lift, are
the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will
not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of the
effort is for all?

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away
as well as when he is at home. And the man, who, when given a letter
for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic
questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the
nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid
off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one
long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks
shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to
let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village--in every
office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such; he is
needed, and needed badly-the man who can carry a message to Garcia.


SHAKESPEARE'S "MARK ANTONY"

ANONYMOUS

A Roman, an orator, and a triumvir, a conqueror when all Rome seemed
armed against him only to have his glory "false played" by a woman
"unto an enemy's triumph,"--such is Shakespeare's story of Mark Antony.
Passion alternates with passion, purpose with purpose, good with evil,
and strength with weakness, until his whole nature seems changed, and
we find the same and yet another man.

In "Julius Cæsar" Antony is seen at his best. He is the one triumphant
figure of the play. Cæsar falls. Brutus and Cassius are in turn
victorious and defeated, but Antony is everywhere a conqueror. Antony
weeping over Cæsar's body, Antony offering his breast to the daggers
which have killed his master, is as plainly the sovereign power of the
moment as when over Cæsar's corpse he forces by his magnetic oratory
the prejudiced populace to call down curses on the heads of the
conspirators.

Cæsar's spirit still lives in Antony,--a spirit that dares face the
conspirators with swords still red with Cæsar's blood and bid them,

Whilst their purple hands do reek and smoke,

fulfill their pleasure,--a spirit that over the dead body of Cæsar
takes the hand of each and yet exclaims:--

"Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,
Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,
It would become me better than to close
In terms of friendship with thine enemies."

Permission is granted Antony to speak a farewell word over the body of
Cæsar in the crowded market place. Before the populace, hostile and
prejudiced, Antony stands as the friend of Cæsar. Slowly, surely,
making his approach step by step, with consummate tact he steals away
their hearts and paves the way for his own victory. The honorable men
gradually turn to villains of the blackest dye. Cæsar's mantle, which
but a moment before had called forth bitter curses, now brings tears to
every Roman's eye. The populace fast yields to his eloquence. He
conquers every vestige of distrust as he says:--

"I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him."

And now the matchless orator throws off his disguise. With resistless
vehemence he pours forth a flood of eloquence which bears the fickle
mob like straws before its tide:--

"I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me; but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that would move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny."

The effect is magical. The rage of the populace is quickened to a white
heat; and, baffled, beaten by a plain, blunt man, the terror-stricken
conspirators ride like madness through the gates of Rome.


ANDR. AND HALE

From "Orations and After-Dinner Speeches," the Cassell Publishing
Company, New York, publishers.

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

André's story is the one overmastering romance of the Revolution.
American and English literature is full of eloquence and poetry in
tribute to his memory and sympathy for his fate. After the lapse of a
hundred years, there is no abatement of absorbing interest. What had
this young man done to merit immortality? The mission whose tragic
issue lifted him out of the oblivion of other minor British officers,
in its inception was free from peril or daring, and its objects and
purposes were utterly infamous.

Had he succeeded by the desecration of the honorable uses of passes and
flags of truce, his name would have been held in everlasting
execration. In his failure the infant Republic escaped the dagger with
which he was feeling for its heart, and the crime was drowned in tears
for his untimely end. His youth and beauty, the brightness of his life,
the calm courage in the gloom of his death, his early love and
disappointment, surrounded him with a halo of poetry and pity which
have secured for him what he most sought and could never have won in
battles and sieges,--a fame and recognition which have outlived that of
all the generals under whom he served.

Are kings only grateful, and do not republics forget? Is fame a
travesty, and the judgment of mankind a farce? America had a parallel
case in Captain Nathan Hale. Of the same age as André, he, after
graduation at Yale College with high honors, enlisted in the patriot
cause at the beginning of the contest, and secured the love and
confidence of all about him. When none else would go upon a most
important and perilous mission, he volunteered, and was captured by the
British.

While André received every kindness, courtesy, and attention, and was
fed from Washington's table, Hale was thrust into a noisome dungeon in
the sugarhouse. While André was tried by a board of officers and had
ample time and every facility for defense, Hale was summarily ordered
to execution the next morning. While André's last wishes and bequests
were sacredly followed, the infamous Cunningham tore from Hale his
cherished Bible and destroyed before his eyes his last letter to his
mother and sister, and asked him what he had to say. "All I have to
say," was his reply, "is, I regret I have but one life to lose for my
country."

The dying declarations of Andre and Hale express the animating spirit
of their several armies, and teach why, with all her power, England
could not conquer America. "I call upon you to witness that I die like
a brave man," said André, and he spoke from British and Hessian
surroundings, seeking only glory and pay. "I regret I have but one life
to lose for my country," said Hale; and, with him and his comrades,
self was forgotten in that absorbing, passionate patriotism which
pledges fortune, honor, and life to the sacred cause.


THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON

BY THEODORE PARKER

One raw morning in spring--it will be eighty years the nineteenth day
of this month--Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great
Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an
officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came to
seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of
Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia
came together before daylight, "for training." A great, tall man, with
a large head and a high, wide brow, their captain,--one who had "seen
service,"--marshaled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bade
"every man load his piece with powder and ball." "I will order the
first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered. "Don't
fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war, let it begin
here."

Gentlemen, you know what followed; those farmers and mechanics "fired
the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the bones of
such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred honor to the
Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their lives. I was born
in that little town, and bred up amid the memories of that day. When a
boy, my mother lifted me up, on Sunday, in her religious, patriotic
arms, and held me while I read the first monumental line I ever saw--
"Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind."

Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome, in
many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian obelisks, have read what was
written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt,
but no chiseled stone has ever stirred me to such emotion as these
rustic names of men who fell "In the Sacred Cause of God and their
Country."

Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early fanned
into a flame in my boyish heart. The monument covers the bones of my
own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green grass
at Lexington. It was my own name which stands chiseled on that stone;
the tall Captain who marshaled his fellow farmers and mechanics into
stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war
of American Independence,--the last to leave the field,--was my
father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket
he that day captured from the foe, I learned also another religious
lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." I keep them
both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both
"In the Sacred Cause of God and my Country."


THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE

Reprinted with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.

BY HENRY W. GRADY

I went to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol Hill; my
heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's
Capitol, and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its
tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the
judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that
was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not
look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that
had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if
honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last
owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is
lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.

Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest
man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious
house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich
with the promise of harvest.

Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. Outside, there
stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright man, with no mortgage on
his roof, no lien on his growing crops, master of his own land and
master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man,
but happy in the heart and home of his son.

They started to their home, and as they reached the door the old mother
came with the sunset falling fair on her face, and lighting up her
deep, patient eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of
her heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond was
the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart and
conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down the lane came
the children, trooping home after the cows, seeking as truant birds do
the quiet of their home nest.

And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as the
wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled bird called
from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the cricket's cry, and
the stars were swarming in the sky--got the family around him, and,
taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, the
little baby hiding in the folds of its mother's dress, while he closed
the record of that simple day by calling down God's benediction on that
family and on that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble
Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I
said, "Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last
the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope and
the promise of this republic."


GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

BY CANON G. W. FARRAR

When Abraham Lincoln sat, book in hand, day after day, under the tree,
moving round it as the shadow crossed, absorbed in mastering his task;
when James Garfield rang the bell at Hiram Institute on the very stroke
of the hour and swept the schoolroom as faithfully as he mastered his
Greek lesson; when Ulysses Grant, sent with his team to meet some men
who came to load his cart with logs, and, finding no men, loaded the
cart with his own boy's strength, they showed in the conscientious
performance of duty the qualities which were to raise them to become
kings of men. When John Adams was told that his son, John Quincy Adams,
had been elected President of the United States, he said, "He has
always been laborious, child and man, from infancy."


But the youth was not destined to die in the deep valley of obscurity
and toil, in which it is the lot--and perhaps the happy lot--of most of
us to spend our little lives. The hour came; the man was needed. In
1861 there broke out that most terrible war of modern days. Grant
received a commission as Colonel of Volunteers, and in four years the
struggling toiler had been raised to the chief command of a vaster army
than has ever been handled by any mortal man. Who could have imagined
that four years would make that enormous difference? But it is often
so. The great men needed for some tremendous crisis have stepped often,
as it were, out of a door in the wall which no man had noticed; and,
unannounced, unheralded, without prestige, have made their way silently
and single-handed to the front. And there was no luck in it. It was a
work of inflexible faithfulness, of indomitable resolution, of
sleepless energy, and iron purpose and tenacity. In the campaigns at
Fort Donelson; in the desperate battle at Shiloh; in the siege of
Corinth; in battle after battle, in seige after seige; whatever Grant
had to do, he did it with his might. Other generals might fail--he
would not fail. He showed what a man could do whose will was strong. He
undertook, as General Sherman said of him, what no one else would have
ventured and his very soldiers began to reflect something of his
indomitable determination.

His sayings revealed the man. "I have nothing to do with opinions," he
said at the outset," and shall only deal with armed rebellion." "In
riding over the field," he said at Shiloh, "I saw that either side was
ready to give way, if the other showed a bold front. I took the
opportunity, and ordered an advance along the whole line." "No terms,"
he wrote to General Buckner at Fort Donelson (and it is pleasant to
know that General Buckner stood as a warm friend beside his dying bed);
"no terms other than unconditional surrender can be accepted." "My
headquarters," he wrote from Vicksburg, "will be on the field." With a
military genius which embraced the vastest plans while attending to the
smallest details, he defeated, one after another, every great general
of the Confederates except Stonewall Jackson. The Southerners felt that
he held them as in the grasp of a vise; that this man could neither be
arrested nor avoided. For all this he has been severely blamed. He
ought not to be blamed. He has been called a butcher, which is grossly
unjust. He loved peace; he hated bloodshed; his heart was generous and
kind. His orders were to save lives, to save treasure, but at all costs
to save his country--and he did save his country.

After the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the war was over. He had
put his hand to the plow and had looked not back. He had made blow
after blow, each following where the last had struck; he had wielded
like a hammer the gigantic forces at his disposal, and had smitten
opposition into the dust. It was a mighty work, and he had done it
well. Surely history has shown that for the future destinies of a
mighty nation it was a necessary and blessed work!


AMERICAN COURAGE

From the copyrighted print in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George
Riddle, with the permission of Duffield and Company, New York,
publishers.

BY SHERMAN HOAR

I fear we undervalue the devotion to country which comes from a
contemplation of what has been done and suffered in her name. I feel
that we teach those who are to make or mar the future of this nation
too much of what has been done elsewhere, and too little of what has
been done here. Courage is the characteristic of no one land or time.
The world's history is full of it and the lessons it teaches. American
courage, however, is of this nation; it is ours, and if the finest
national spirit is worth the creating; if patriotism is still a quality
to be engendered in our youth; if love of country is still to be a
strong power for good, those acts of devotion and of heroic personal
sacrifice with which our history is filled, are worthy of earnest
study, of continued contemplation, and of perpetual consideration.

"Let him who will, sing deeds done well across the sea,
Here, lovely Land, men bravely live and die for Thee."

The particular example I desire to speak about is of that splendid
quality of courage which dares everything not for self or country, but
for an enemy. It is of that kind which is called into existence not by
dreams of glory, or by love of land, but by the highest human desire;
the desire to mitigate suffering in those who are against us.

In the afternoon of the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, General
Kershaw of the Confederate army was sitting in his quarters when
suddenly a young South Carolinian named Kirkland entered, and, after
the usual salutations, said: "General, I can't stand this." The
general, thinking the statement a little abrupt, asked what it was he
could not stand, and Kirkland replied: "Those poor fellows out yonder
have been crying for water all day, and I have come to you to ask if I
may go and give them some." The "poor fellows" were Union soldiers who
lay wounded between the Union and Confederate lines. To go to them,
Kirkland must go beyond the protection of the breastworks and expose
himself to a fire from the Union sharpshooters, who, so far during that
day, had made the raising above the Confederate works of so much as a
head an act of extreme danger. General Kershaw at first refused to
allow Kirkland to go on his errand, but at last, as the lad persisted
in his request, declined to forbid him, leaving the responsibility for
action with the boy himself. Kirkland, in perfect delight, rushed from
the general's quarters to the front, where he gathered all the canteens
he could carry, filled them with water, and going over the breastworks,
started to give relief to his wounded enemies. No sooner was he in the
open field than our sharpshooters, supposing he was going to plunder
their comrades, began to fire at him. For some minutes he went about
doing good under circumstances of most imminent personal danger. Soon,
however, those to whom he was taking the water recognized the character
of his undertaking. All over the field men sat up and called to him,
and those too hurt to raise themselves, held up their hands and
beckoned to him. Soon our sharpshooters, who luckily had not hit him,
saw that he was indeed an Angel of Mercy, and stopped their fire, and
two armies looked with admiration at the young man's pluck and loving-
kindness. With a beautiful tenderness, Kirkland went about his work,
giving of the water to all, and here and there placing a knapsack
pillow under some poor wounded fellow's head, or putting in a more
comfortable position some shattered leg or arm. Then he went back to
his own lines and the fighting went on. Tell me of a more exalted
example of personal courage and self-denial than that of that
Confederate soldier, or one which more clearly deserves the name of
Christian fortitude. In that terrible War of the Rebellion, Kirkland
gave up his life for a mistaken cause in the battle of Chickamauga, but
I cannot help thanking God that, in our reunited country, we are joint
heirs with the men from the South in the glory and inspiration that
come from such heroic deeds as his.


THE MINUTEMEN OF THE REVOLUTION

Reprinted, with permission, from "The Orations and Addresses of George
William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

The Minuteman of the Revolution! And who was he? He was the old, the
middle-aged, and the young. He was the husband and the father, who left
his plow in the furrow and his hammer on the bench, and marched to die
or be free. He was the son and lover, the plain, shy youth of the
singing school and the village choir, whose heart beat to arms for his
country, and who felt, though he could not say with the old English
cavalier:--

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."

He was the man who was willing to pour out his life's blood for a
principle. Intrenched in his own honesty, the king's gold could not buy
him; enthroned in the love of his fellow citizens, the king's writ
could not take him; and when, on the morning of Lexington, the king's
troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, beyond the clouds
of the moment, the rising sun of the America we behold, and, careless
of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh,
what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flashing hills, the
ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty
British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling
through the streets of the village, panic-stricken and broken.

Him we gratefully recall to-day; him we commit in his immortal youth to
the reverence of our children. And here amid these peaceful fields,--
here in the heart of Middlesex County, of Lexington and Concord and
Bunker Hill, stand fast, Son of Liberty, as the minuteman stood at the
old North Bridge. But should we or our descendants, false to justice or
humanity, betray in any way their cause, spring into life as a hundred
years ago, take one more step, descend, and lead us, as God led you in
saving America, to save the hopes of man.

No hostile fleet for many a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor
is any army but our own likely to tread our soil. Not such are our
enemies to-day. They do not come, proudly stepping to the drumbeat,
their bayonets flashing in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit
shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom; or bigotry and
ignorance shall lay their fatal hands on education; or the arrogance of
caste shall strike at equal rights; or corruption shall poison the very
springs of national life,--there, Minuteman of Liberty, are your
Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. And as you love your country and
your kind, and would have your children rise up and call you blessed,
spare not the enemy. Over the hills, out of the earth, down from the
clouds, pour in resistless might. Fire from every rock and tree, from
door and window, from hearthstone and chamber. Hang upon his flank from
morn to sunset, and so, through a land blazing with indignation, hurl
the hordes of ignorance and corruption and injustice back--back in
utter defeat and ruin.


PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

Reprinted with permission from "The Orations and Addresses of George
William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

On Tuesday, April 18, 1775, Gage, the royal governor, who had decided
to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads
from Boston into Middlesex, to prevent any report of the intended march
from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the
tension of the popular mind, every sound and sight was significant. In
the afternoon, one of the governor's grooms strolled into a stable
where John Ballard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a son of
liberty; and when the groom idly remarked in nervous English "about
what would occur to-morrow," John's heart leaped and his hand shook,
and, asking the groom to finish cleaning the horse, he ran to a friend,
who carried the news straight to Paul Revere.

Gage thought that his secret had been kept, but Lord
Percy, who had heard the people say on the Common that
the troops would miss their aim, undeceived him. Gage
instantly ordered that no one should leave the town. But
Dr. Warren was before him, and, as the troops crossed the
river, Paul Revere was rowing over the river farther down
to Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert
Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North
Church,--

"One, if by land, and two, if by sea,"

as a signal of the march of the British.
It was a brilliant April night. The winter had been unusually mild and
the spring very forward. The hills were already green; the early grain
waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with blossoming orchards.
Under the cloudless moon the soldiers silently marched, and Paul Revere
swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West Cambridge, rousing
every house as he went, spurring for Lexington and Hancock and Adams,
and evading the British patrols, who had been sent out to stop the
news.

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